


shards from a thousand stories

by hulklinging



Category: Runaways (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Driving, F/F, F/M, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Other, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Time Travel Fix-It, Tumblr Prompt, Weddings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulklinging/pseuds/hulklinging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles, a place for me to throw all of my filled prompts/little pieces of fics that are too small to warrant their own fic.</p><p>Everything is gonna be under 1000 words.</p><p> </p><p>Chapter 10 - Tommy and Rebecca have a talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wait for Marriage

**Author's Note:**

> Tommy being a shitkicker is as good a place as any to start this off!

“What are you overthinking now?”

“Nothing,” Teddy says quickly, but with Tommy he’s never quite quick enough. The speedster is sitting on his counter, seating what looks to be a container of straight icing with a large silver spoon. It’s really unfair that he can manage to say anything worth listening to while doing that, but he does.

Under Tommy’s disbelief, Teddy caves. “Just thinking about how ridiculous our lives are. How did you know I was overthinking?”

Tommy rolls his eyes, and shoves another spoonful of icing into his mouth. “You’re always overthinking, dude.”

Well, he’s not wrong.

But he’s not about to tell Tommy that.

“I think Billy was saving that.” Teddy chooses to switch gears, pointing at the offending sugary spread with his spatula. Teddy is supposed to be making pancakes as a nice surprise for his boyfriend, but Tommy’s lesser known superpower is always knowing when it most inconvenient for him to be underfoot.

Tommy just shrugs, and takes a moment to lick his spoon clean again before dipping it into the tub again.

“Billy was saving himself for marriage, too. Look how that one turned out.”

Stunned silence.

Teddy thought he was getting better at at least keeping pace with Tommy’s bullshit. Apparently not, though. Tommy probably has levels of bullshit, and Teddy just hit the next difficulty setting.

He stands there, mouth hanging open because what does one even say to that, what does one even do. Tommy is just smirking, there’s a bit of icing on his upper lip and Teddy cannot believe that he is being trounced by an overgrown toddler, all he wanted to accomplish this morning was breakfast, Jesus Christ…

There’s a big CRASH from the direction of the bathroom, which must be Billy slipping in the shower. Teddy flinches, and Tommy nearly falls off the counter.

“THAT- THAT’S NOT EVEN TRUE?”

“Timetogobye!”

Teddy blinks, and Tommy is gone. So is the meager stack of finished pancakes. And the icing.

“Fucking ridiculous,” mutters Teddy, and flips another pancake.


	2. Don't Trust Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt 'don't trust me' and also 'shhh, c'mere'. Teddy/Billy, time travel.

**“Don’t trust me,”** whispers Billy, panting. The rest of the team keeps its distance but Teddy can’t bring himself to, even with the carnage around his boyfriend, carnage he caused.

“I do,” he answers, holding Billy’s head as he tries to shake his head in disagreement, delirious with the use of his power. “I trust you with my life, Billy. I always will.”

Billy doesn’t want him to, is disappointed in him, he can see it in his eyes. And he smooths his hair, kisses his forehead, washes the blood from his face.

Sleeps with one eye open.

He pushes himself harder, trains to be better so that Billy will never have to resort to that again. But their enemies grow too, in number and in their dangers, and the feeling of wiping blood off of the witch becomes one he’s all too familiar with. It is never Billy’s blood, anymore. Teddy tries to convince himself this is a positive, but there’s a fear in Billy’s eyes that make him think otherwise.

The last straw is a fragile one, snapping midbattle. Teddy is tangled with some D-List villain who gets a lucky claw between his ribs. He hears a pop, and only realizes he’s hit a lung when he tastes the blood in his mouth.

“Teddy!” Billy screams, and then there’s a bright blue, staining his vision even after it goes dark.

He wakes up in a familiar bed, his body smaller than he remembers. Billy (younger, not yet bleeding power, eyes the only hint that this isn’t the first time they’ve played with time) is curled up on one corner of his bed in the Kaplan’s house. They’re not yet Avengers, still teenagers, still growing into themselves. Billy is trembling.

“I told you not to trust me,” he begins. “You were dying and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”

And Teddy leans over, breathes in and feels his chest swell, while. He wraps an arm around Billy, pulling him close, trying to pretend it’s just for the smaller boy’s comfort, and not to also mask his own shakes.

**“Shh, c'mere.”**

He holds onto Billy like a lifeline, and silently promises that this time, they’ll do better. They have to. Billy drifts off, and Teddy matches his breathing, doing his best to ignore the lingering panic that the next breath will catch and bubble.

He wipes a tear from his sleeping lover’s face, and it’s familiar for all the wrong reasons. _‘Don’t trust me’_ , he’ll say, but Teddy can’t help it.

_‘I do, I do, I do.’_


	3. Driving Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda takes one son for a drive. Her twin takes the other.

“Got your mirrors set?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“What about the seat, is it alright?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Do you remember where everything is? It’s different than the car you were practicing on before-”

“Blinkers are here, steering wheel is in front of me, keys are still in your hand…”

“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, Billy Maximoff. I’m just being cautious.”

Billy knows this, he does. But she does this every time they practice driving. Every time.

Next time, he’s going with Uncle Pete, and Tommy can drive Mom’s car.

She hands over the keys, finally, and he puts them in the ignition and manages to turn the car on without any complaints from his mother. He’s about to put the car in gear when her arm shoots out, grabbing his shoulder and making him jump, which is _not good teaching technique, Mom, holy shit._

“Is your seatbelt on?”

Billy opens his mouth to say of course it is, but then realizes that it most definitely isn’t. His ears burning, he buckles up without a word, feeling the disapproval radiating from his mother in the passenger seat.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Wanda nods, seemingly satisfied with the apology. “It’s okay. It’s a lot to remember. That’s why we’re taking this slow, right?”

Billy nods, and inches the car out of their driveway.

The rest of the lesson goes pretty well. Billy is actually feeling confident, as they head back home. Then someone behind him honks, and he flinches, although he manages not to swerve. Ha! Another victory.

They’re on a small side road, but for some reason the car behind him feels the need to pass him. He scowls, because he wasn’t going that slow, honestly. Then he chances a look over at the car as it passes, and realizes it is very, very familiar.

“I’ll kill him,” mutters Wanda.

Uncle Pete waves at them from the passenger window as Tommy speeds past, laughing loud enough that Billy can hear it. Then they’re gone, ripping down the road like it’s some kind of racetrack, because of course they are.

Wanda is still grumbling under her breath, and she pulls out her phone, typing out a text with more aggression than is strictly necessary.

“Mom…?” Billy wants to read what she’s saying, but he wants to stay on the road more.

She puts her phone away with a smile. “Sorry. I was just texting Uncle Alex.”

Uncle Alex. Who is a cop.

Billy has always been told he has his mother’s smile. With matching smirks, they drive home.


	4. Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'What's the best gift Teddy gave Billy and vice versa?'

The best present Billy gave Teddy was this -

Standing in a circle as they stumble through awkward first meeting introductions, Teddy can’t help but stare at the boy next to him.

It’s not just because he’s gorgeous ( _oh but he is he really is_ ). There’s something unapologetic in his stance, in the defiant tilt of his chin even as he admits he has no idea what he’s doing here.

It’s a week later and Teddy makes some self-deprecating joke, because of course he does. Billy turns to him, frowning.

“Don’t do that,” he says. He must realize how much that sounded like a command, because his cheeks go red as he starts to backpeddle. “I mean, we’re all new at this. You’re doing fine.”

The best present Billy’s given Teddy is his genuine self, his understated strength, his special brand of protectiveness.

Sometimes, it scares him ( _‘I want you to die!’_ ) but most of the time it’s something to hold on to, even when everything else starts to fall apart.

The best present Teddy’s ever given Billy is this -

Trust. It’s there from the first time they try to fly, when Teddy looks at him in the eye and with much too much honestly for how little time they’ve actually known each other says he knows Billy won’t let him fall. He could have said 'Don’t worry,’ mentioned how he can attempt to grow wings fast enough to cover up any of Billy’s mistakes. But he doesn’t. He just… trusts in Billy.

He still remembers how light he felt, that first time he flew. That’s not because of the flying (although that is marvellous). That feeling, he realizes, has everything to do with Teddy.

Teddy trusts Billy, trusts his powers even when no one does, trusts him in spite of his mistakes ('He could have died, I didn’t mean to’), trusts him more than Billy trusts himself.

(and isn’t that why when they crumble it happens so fast, because Teddy thinks about that immediate instinct to trust and protect and can’t help but wonder if he came by it honestly)

When the ship lifts off, when they save the world, it’s what makes their hands warm as they clasp them, it’s what makes them both think that this time they can make it work.

The best gift Teddy ever gave Billy was his trust, and he gives it twice for luck.


	5. Mother Knows Best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy is sick. His mom makes soup.

“Mom, you don’t have to do this,” Billy gets out. He’s holding onto the doorframe of his apartment, and honestly he’s pretty impressed he made it all the way from his bed to the door. He hasn’t been out of bed except to stumble to the bathroom in almost three days.

“Teddy is stuck at work until late,” his mother informs him, and how does she know that? Maybe she texted Teddy. His phone is dead and he didn’t feel like exhausting himself by getting the charger from the living room. “I brought you soup.”

Billy stands to the side and lets his mother walk past him, because her soup is really good and because if she so much as brushes him he’s gonna fall over.

“I’m almost twenty three,” he reminds her weakly. She ignores him and heads right to their small kitchen. He can hear her getting a pot down, the click of their shitty gas stove. He smiles in spite of himself and hobbles over to their couch, dragging his blanket behind him.

He must doze off, because the next thing he knows his mother is pressing a warm bowl of delicious smelling liquid into his hands.

“This isn’t chicken noodle.” He feels like he might have left his brain back the door, but his mom just chuckles.

“It’s better, I promise.”

It is good, although it makes him feel more awake, which means he gets to really feel how every inch of him is aching. He drifts, thinking about days he spent home from school when he was a kid, Rebecca’s hot water bottles and chicken noodle soup and cough syrup kisses on too-hot foreheads.

Wanda does her sick care differently. The soup is beets, she’s humming absent-mindedly as she reads something an armchair away. There’s a pillow tucked underneath him that definitely wasn’t there when he fell asleep, and there’s something burning soft smoke that makes his lungs feel like they’re full for the first time in a week.

Sometimes, he stops and thinks about where he would be if Wanda hadn’t had to give him up when he was a baby. It’s not that he’s unhappy with his life. He loves the Kaplans, loves his little brothers. And if he hadn’t grown up with them, he would have never met Teddy, wouldn’t be living in this little apartment with the love of his life. But he can’t help but indulge in the what ifs, every once in a while.

But here on this couch, with his birth mother sitting next to him, letting him know that Rebecca was going to stop by later and that Teddy would bring dinner home, he closes his eyes and thinks that maybe his life wouldn’t have been much different at all. He breathes in as deep as his sick lungs can manage, and eats his soup under his mother’s watchful eye, and even with the aches he feels more content than he has in some time. Like his skin fits a little bit better.

“Thanks, mom,” he murmurs, and she chuckles, leans over to kiss him on the forehead. Some things are a constant, wherever you are, whatever what if you’re living.


	6. Slow Motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot left unsaid between Tommy and David.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "Time passes slower without you."

They don’t say it out loud.

There’s just never a good moment. Tommy never realizes how much he cares about David until they’re in the middle of a firefight, when he turns to check on him only to see him holding his own, concentration in his eyes and a sureness in his limbs that Tommy can’t help but envy.

The good thing about being a speedster is that no one sees your hesitation, the moments where you stutter. Tommy readjusts and second guesses, the words at the tip of his tongue until David looks away again.

“Noodles?” He says instead, like they’re still kids, like this is still just some casual work friendship.

And when David smiles his eyes crinkle, and Tommy doesn’t mind waiting up for him, even if he makes sure to complain anyway, because that’s the pattern they follow, that’s what they are to each other, he doesn’t have to explain to David that he only whines about people he cares about. David gets it.

Tommy’s not really used to people getting him.

But he’s getting there.

Then there’s some kind of mutant emergency that Tommy’s not invited to, because Scarlet Witch twins or not, him and his brother have never really bothered to reach out to the rest of their kind. Their kind is less definable than just an X gene, and anyways mutants are always having drama and there’s too many tears for Tommy to ever really be comfortable around them. Still, he gets that David has to go.

He just thought he’d come back.

“Time passes slower without you,” Tommy says, too fast for anyone to catch, but David would have understood anyway, through some weird mix of memorization of what emotions look like on faces and spending too much time with him. He supposes there’s a joke to make there, something about geniuses and speed reading, but his thoughts feel stilted, and the punchline avoids him as he stares down at the bed that holds his… best friend? Partner? They haven’t even kissed, but Tommy thinks they probably both want to. He actually thinks that maybe they’ve both wanted that for a long time. And isn’t that embarrassing, that he didn’t even realize that?

It’s just that David is so different from everyone else he’s been drawn to. He’s been looking for someone to match him for speed, match him for attitude and anger. David isn’t as fast as him, but he’s quick. David’s anger simmers while Tommy’s explodes. Tommy’s been looking for a match but David’s more like a matching set, someone that compliments him so well he didn’t even notice it.

He looks down at David’s face, and the seconds between each beep of the heart monitor stretch, until he’s pacing between each one, and he can’t tell if he’s really moving faster and faster or if his heart is beating slower and slower.

He makes a decision, and this time there’s no hesitation. He never asks his brother for anything, but this is important. David is important. And he has to wake up, so Tommy can say that to him out loud.

He’ll probably stumble on the words, probably do the whole confession thing wrong. But that’s okay. David will understand him. He always does.


	7. Dressing Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Runaways attend a wedding and attire is questioned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt 'Really? Do I look stupid?'
> 
> You can reblog it [here.](http://hulklinging.tumblr.com/post/149925494003/xavolina-for-really-do-i-look-stupid-3)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

“You didn’t… have to wear a dress.”

Karolina kinda feels like she gasps the statement, surprise making her words all breathy, but Xavin seems to take it like a reprimand.

“Really? Do I look stupid?”

“No!” Hands out like she’s going to physically stop Xavin if her girlfriend decides to go change, and she just might, too. Not only because they’re already quite late, but because she looks absolutely stunning, all dolled up.

Xavin takes her breath away in little ways almost every day, but to see her like this, dolled up in a dress that compliments hers, matching bridesmaids for an old friend’s wedding, stirs something new and bright in Karolina.

(“Do you mind being called a bridesmaid?” Molly asked, as they were all getting fitted. The styles are all different, tailored to each of them, and Molly grins as she spins and watches her hem flare. She’s almost eighteen, the last of them to become an adult, but probably the smartest of all of them, really.

Xavin looks at herself in the mirror, feeling okay with being feminine, today. Liking that for once her clothes are being altered to fit her, and not the other way around.

“Not today,” she says, and Molly laughs, because she’s always understood more than they gave her credit for, because she takes these giant strange things in stride. She makes it all seem easy.)

Karolina could never have imagined this. Not when she was sitting at home, barely fifteen and thinking about how beautiful Nico looked in black, not when she was in space and learning how to act around her alien fiancee. Then again, her family has never been good at thinking ahead, at picturing the future. She watches Nico (who looks stunning in white, too) cry at her own wedding and wonders at how this could have happened, how these broken kids could have come so far as to get this, a fairy tale wedding and all of them still standing (or standing anew, Gert rolling her eyes on Chase’s arm as her boyfriend cries with the bride). This day is what they deserve, and Xavin looks absolutely stunning beside her.

When Nico winks at her before throwing the bouquet, she’s not even surprised that it comes right to her. She lets her rainbows loose a little to catch it anyway, and pulls Xavin in for a kiss, laughing into her partner’s mouth as Molly whoops next to them. The bouquet is one of Klara’s, which means it’s already tangling in her hair by the time they part, matching flower crowns like a promise.

“You never look stupid to me,” Karolina mutters, wanting to make sure Xavin knows it.

By her grin, she does.


	8. And Katie Makes Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy and Teddy adopt.

She doesn’t start out as their Katie.

They spend a few very stressful months dealing with Teddy’s mother’s side of the family, and Teddy is aching with all this new information about a mother he never got to know (and the mother he did, too. Her name and her family and her story, tucked away in a folder, hidden in the back of his dresser). They find her on one of their last days before they start on home, and she’s just a baby, just a baby and alone in the universe. They’ve been looking into adoption back home, but things have been so busy and neither of them have records that are exactly clean. 

“We named her Anelle,” says one of the women in charge of all the orphans this dying outpost has to offer. A big name for a small hatchling. “We hoped it would bring her luck.”

Billy watches his husband pick her up and cradle her in his arms, as gentle as he’s ever seen him, and thinks the luck is all theirs. 

Adopting a Skrull is easy enough, although having it recognized on Earth is a more stressful process. Billy breathes an audible sigh of relief once he has the papers in his hand. Now she’s completely theirs. No one can come and try to take her away. 

With two dads who are now well known members of the Avengers, someone would have to be pretty stupid to try. 

Anelle Katherine Kaplan grows up wanting for nothing, surrounded by an adoring extended family and two of the most attentive parents an alien could ask for. She’s a shifter, of course, and as she grows her fathers adjust to the fact that sometimes they will go to wake up their daughter only to find that for the day they have a son instead. He switches between going by Nell or Katie, plays around with all sorts of more human forms as she grows into herself. The Earth is a more colourful one these days, and with two prominent members of the Avengers very open about their Skrull heritage, more and more often Nell leaves his green skin as is when he leaves the house, her hair switching between a bright blonde and a dark, curly brown, honouring both of her dads in turn. 

She spends occasional weekends with Auntie Xavin, who teaches her about Skrull culture and the fluidity of gender alike. One of these weekends he comes back vegan, which has both of his dad’s scrambling and Billy calling up Karolina in a panic. 

“This is your fault, K. The least you can do is send him home with some recipes.”

Katherine Anelle (she makes the change herself, says it sounds and feels better) would have made a terrible Skrull. She is gentle and compassionate, keeps kosher and uses her super strength to help old Mr. Kim from next door with his groceries, holds her twin cousins with the same expression that her father wore when he first held her, and never grows out of asking her dads for a bedtime story.

Billy knows every parent says the same thing, but as he watches his child show his husband his first force field, he practically glows with pride. 

She’s perfect. She might have made a terrible Skrull, but she is just perfect as a Kaplan.


	9. Over Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill for eli x kate, 'everything will fall into place.'

“‘Everything will fall into place.’ Do you remember when you said that to me?”

This is the deal. They meet at a bar that they take turns picking, every two weeks. They update each other on their lives. There are rules.

1\. No asking the other to come to their senses and stop being a superhero or start being one again.

2\. No crime fighting.

3\. No screaming matches.

4\. No going home with each other.

Neither of them have ever been good at following the rules, but they do their best.

“I don’t, actually.” Kate steals the olive from the drink she picked from Eli and he is liking in spite of himself. “I couldn’t have been being serious.”

“You weren’t, no. You were making fun of me and a plan I suggested.”

Kate smiles. Her lipstick is purple and distracting. They haven’t fought in a few weeks, so Eli thought that’s how the evening would probably end. But they also haven’t wound up in each other’s beds in a while, so who knows.

“Now that sounds like me.”

Eli takes another sip of his drink. Kate orders another round. The silence is comfortable, a far cry from their first time out, tense and full of things unsaid.

“Don’t you miss it?”

The fight it was. “Bishop,” Eli warns.

“I’m not asking you to come back to it. I’m just asking if you miss it.”

Eli bites back the irritation and gives her an honest answer instead. It’s something he’s been working on. These drinks with Kate have turned out to be the perfect place to apply his new skills practically.

“Sometimes? Yeah, I really do.” When he sees a supervillan charging through the city on TV, or he overhears an eyewitness talking about a hero’s astonishing save. There was one time, when some two bit crook threatened his library with some artifact that delighted in starting fires, where he threw out his promise to himself and took the guy down. It had felt so good. But he also remembers being on the run, being chased down by the people he was meant to protect. He remembers people dying on his watch, and being able to do nothing to help.

Even the drugs felt better than that.

“Then why don’t you come back? If you miss it.”

“Because I would miss everything else more.” And he does mean everything. He’d have to give it up, couldn’t have his superheroing following him home, or to the library and the kids he’s been teaching to read over the summer, or to school and all his bright eyed classmates, learning how to change the world without any powers at all. As he says it, he knows it’s true. Even after he got powers fairly, they were always a high for him. Save the day, thrive in that rush. Come down and feel empty and patrol the streets hoping to stumble upon terrible things just so he can save the day again. Better that the terrible things don’t happen at all. Superheroes are for emergencies. He’s going to school so he can make a preventative difference. That’s better than anything he could do in a mask.

Kate looks at him, and he thinks maybe she finally gets it. She was where he was once, after all. Trying to save the world with soup kitchens and petitions. It didn’t work for her, in the same way being a superhero didn’t work for him. They’re better like this.

“If I ever have kids,” she says. “I hope they have teachers like you.”

Once upon a time, they had talked about kids of their own. But that was lifetimes ago, and that isn’t the path they’re on anymore. Still, the compliment makes him want to kiss her. He thinks they’ll always love each other, in their own ways, when their paths cross.

He finishes his drink.

“Are you coming?”

She nods. “For a little while.”

They’ll go to his, fall together, and then she will reassemble herself into Hawkeye and go on patrol, and he will watch her leave. Maybe tonight is the night where he won’t feel the pull to join her at all.


	10. Too Young

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone keeps asking Tommy to stay. He says no to almost every one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt "You're too young to hate the world", with Rebecca and Tommy.

He says no, at first.

Billy asks him, and he says no.

Billy’s brothers ask him, as they take turns getting piggy backs (and he’s reminded of another little girl, and remembers what happens when he takes a moment to relax and play). He says no.

Billy’s father asks him, awkward but kind. He says no.

Even Teddy asks him. This is the easiest no of all. Teddy may only be recently familyless, but he’ll figure out soon enough that it’s harder to get over than he realizes. Tommy doesn’t want to be around to see that, though.

Rebecca Kaplan does not ask him.

She catches him hanging around the stoop one day, debating on whether he should come to the dinner he was invited to or go bother Kate or Eli or literally anyone else instead. She’s still all dressed up from work, and she’s as surprised to see him as he is to see her.

“Tommy,” she says after a moment. “Are you coming inside?”

The ‘no’ is on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows it. “Still deciding, Mrs. K.”

Mrs. Kaplan sounds too formal, Rebecca too familiar. 'Mom’ is much too fast, even for him, and anyway this is Billy’s mother. Not his. So Mrs. K it is.

She nods, like that’s a completely rational response and he’s not crazy for not immediately taking up every little thing they offer him. She’s eyeing him in a strange way, and he can feel the question coming, the one asking him to stay much longer than a dinner, and he’s going to have to tell this nice, very smart lady that he’s too scared to consider it, because it seems too easy and nothing has ever been easy for him so why would it start now?

She doesn’t ask him to stay, though.

“It’s okay, you know. To want things to go well. It’s not naive, or silly.”

He actually stops moving to stare at her, that’s how thrown he is by the comment. “What?”

“You’ve been through a lot. More than anyone, let alone someone your age, should have to deal with. And you’ve made it through by being hard. You’re very strong, that much is obvious.”

Later, he will privately let himself glow over this compliment, told in such a matter-of-fact way by this intimidating mother. Not his mother, but a mother nonetheless.

In the moment, he’s still too surprised to even muster a thanks.

“If I’m entirely off base, you can just ignore this. I won’t tell Billy I saw you, and you can go on your way.”

That option sounds nice, but in a distant way, like it’s less real now.

“But it seems to me like you’re angry at yourself for wanting this to go well. It’s okay, to want a break. You’re too young to hate the world.”

Tommy is gaping at her. She looks just the same as she did when she walked up, only now Tommy notices the soft edge of her smile, the little swirl of yellow paint decorating one corner of her briefcase, drawn by clumsy hands.

A second passes. He makes his decision.

“What’s for dinner then, Mrs. K?”

His voice is a little scratchy, his delivery a little off, but her smile makes it obvious she doesn’t mind.


End file.
